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Category: Makes

Way back when, I bought an iCade. This bartop-style arcade machine was actually a very pretty bluetooth controller. Simply slot your first-generation iPad into the ‘screen’ and pair. A number of iPad games supported it, but I never really enjoyed the experience. So, I decided to turn it into a…

In which our hero downsizes radically A couple of months ago we held the first in the ‘regeneration’ of the Milton Keynes Raspberry Jam. I took along my ZX Raspberry for all to see and wonder over. One eager and Sinclair-experienced attendee soon put me in my place. “Shame it’s…

A time-lapse showing the construction of Just Add Sharks‘ Mini Strandbeest kit which I picked up at EMF Camp 2016. It’s a great kit and took about 90 minutes to put together. And here’s the result (with a little help from a hairdryer): What’s a Strandbeest?

In which our hero is unable to leave well alone A little epilogue to the ZX Raspberry project. I came into possession of a very dead ZX Spectrum+ and, following my own personal rule of ‘it gets fixed or it gets modded’, I decided that it was time for a ZX…

Despite wanting to convert a ZX Spectrum into a USB keyboard for some time, I held off to wait for the unlikely duo of the ZX Spectrum Vega and the Recreated ZX Spectrum. Sadly, neither buttered my parsnips, and the reasons why have been discussed at length around this Internet of ours, so I shall say no more here. What I really wanted a combination of the two: The stand-alone operation of the Vega and the keyboard of the ‘Recreated’.

Not being one to re-invent the wheel, I’d been reading over this Instructable wot I found and occasionally drooling over the excellent kits offered by Tynemouth Software. Then, a battered old Speccy case and the parts needed for a USB interface found their way onto a Facebook group for just £20, their current owner being caught between retro-project-awesomeness and ‘having a life’ and ‘friends’. Clearly making the wrong choice, he put them up for sale.

I’ve often wondered when my first ‘real life’ 3D printing experience would come. I’ve been lucky enough to see a few printers in action, indeed there’s one at The National Museum of Computing, but these have all worked as demonstrations of the technology, printing out head scans, chess pieces and the like. When would 3D printing actually have an impact on my life?

I realised I hadn’t used the iCade for a while. This arcade housing for the iPad was a lot of fun for the first few weeks, but I had got tired of the ‘gotchas’ such as the inability to run iMame4All without some significant work (and even then, it didn’t…